A second grade class at Bryant Webster K-8 school in Denver (Joe Amon, The Denver Post).

A new wrinkle to dual language education, additional hurdles for parents opposed to vaccinations, an untimely server crash slows testing, harsh sentences for Atlanta educators convicted in a cheating scandal and a kid who played hooky on Opening Day …

Lots of talk this week about the harsh sentences handed down to administrators and educators convicted in the Atlanta cheating scandal. Best to go to the source that broke the story with its dogged investigative reporting — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The threat of a prison sentence for a schoolteacher usually is connected to cases of sexual malfeasance, notes the Marshall Project’s Dana Goldstein, author of “The Teacher Wars,” a well-reviewed book on the history of the profession. Many commentators, Goldstein points out, have noted that middle-class black teachers in Atlanta have been charged with racketeering, but not affluent white financial professionals implicated in the subprime mortgage crisis.

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